Google have been pretty reasonable in giving plenty of notice of the change, and also allowing all photos uploaded before the change in June 21 to remain on Google Photos without charge. BUT, what really irks is the lack of acknowledgement of what Google have had from me for no charge in return for getting my photos; all the personal data to feed advertising, machine learning and so on. There has been much less comment on this aspect than I expected, thought it was good to hear @MikeElgan raise it on TWIT 799: Don’t Tweet the Fleet
I accepted Google’s use of my data as an implicit ‘cost’ of free storage. So, if they now want to charge, I want Google to stop using my data. Of course, that will not happen, so I’ll leave what is already in Google Photos in place and use something else going forward (OneDrive, Amazon or Flickr). If I have to pay, then it doesn’t have to be for a Google service. Makes me think about moving on from GMail too and paying for a service elsewhere.